Andy Burnham says there is a “deep” problem in the NHS that requires a comprehensive overhaul of treatment.

In a major admission for a senior Labour politician, he claims that the NHS “cannot survive” in its current form over the longer term because it is unable to deal with the complex needs of an ageing population.

Writing on The Daily Telegraph website, Mr Burnham concedes that a report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS trust scandal, due later this month, will find that “regulatory failures” led to the deaths of hundreds of elderly people. He claims that the problems were down not to poor nursing standards but systemic issues.

“The 21st century is asking questions of our 20th century health and care services that, increasingly, they are simply not able to answer,” he writes. “Stories of older people lost in big general hospitals – disorientated and dehydrated – are recurring with ever greater frequency”.

Over the past few months, David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, have criticised the standards of nursing in hospitals. Mr Burnham claims the root of the problem is “the age profile of the patients on the wards”.

“Now, there are ever greater numbers of very frail people in their eighties and nineties, with intensive physical, mental and social needs. And the wards are simply not geared up to meet all those needs,” he says.

“And this is the crux of the problem. There is a tendency for hospitals to operate on a production-line model. Too often they see the immediate problem – the broken hip, the stroke. They do not see the whole person behind it.”

In a speech on Thursday, Mr Burnham will propose that health, social care and mental health budgets are combined so that there is a “single point of contact” to deal with all patients’ needs.

He believes this will ultimately save money because it will mean that people can be cared for more cheaply and effectively in the community than in hospital.

“It is now costing £4 million a week to keep people in hospital because the support isn’t there for them at home,” he says. “The NHS cannot thrive like this. In the long term it cannot survive like this.”

Last night, Mr Hunt said: “Labour had 13 years to create a more integrated health care system but failed to do so. In fact the system they left was fragmented and focused on treating patients as a collection of conditions not as individuals.”